Raptor (Primeval)
This article is for the dromaeosaurid species regularly seen in the original ''Primeval programme. For other uses, see Raptor.'' The Raptor was an unknown species of dromaeosaur from the Cretaceous period. It has appeared numerous times in Primeval, and it is one of the most recurring creatures in the show. It has so far appeared in Series 2, Series 3, Series 4, and Series 5. Facts Raptors possessed long sharp sickle claws on their feet, which they used to attack their prey. Intelligent and aggressive, they would chase after their prey before jumping onto them to kill by biting and stabbing. They sometimes lived in groups of two - three, but they seemed to prefer to hunt alone; they were also capable of killing animals as large as humans from a young age. (Episode 2.1) Raptors had loose social structure. Infants were prone to being attacked by older individuals, (Episode 2.1) although Raptors did sometimes defend their own kind against larger creatures. Raptors would fight off dinosaurs many times their own size, seen when a Raptor attacked a Spinosaurus despite the far greater size of its opponent. Because of their small body, it was hard for large predators to shake Raptors off. (Episode 4.1) )]] Male Raptors were more aggressive than females, and also much more resilient to tranquilisers. Males were also distinguished from females by a blue spot over the eye which female Raptors lacked. (Episode 2.1) Raptors communicated through various ways including screeching and clucking. They also had protofeathers on their bodies which shivered and made a hissing noise when the Raptor was preparing to attack. In Primeval Episode 2.1 Three Raptors - two adults (one male, one female) and a baby - came through an Anomaly into the Castle Cross Shopping Mall in the present, where both of the adults killed a pair of security guards and then ran rampant in the Shopping Mall. When the Anomaly Research Centre team arrived, the female adult Raptor attacked Connor Temple at the Mall's sweet stands and nearly killed him, but Connor narrowly escaped under a closing metal shutter. )]] One of the adult Raptors later attacked Stephen Hart and Nick Cutter in a laser tag arena, and pinned Stephen down before being distracted and lured off by the laser tag sound effects. The baby Raptor, meanwhile, was in the employees' locker room, and attacked and wounded the Cleaner and took shelter from Connor under the room's benches before Connor managed to tranquilise it. The adult female Raptor also attacked Cutter and Stephen in a shopping area, until Stephen managed to tranquilise it on an escalator. The team subsequently brought the tranquilised female and baby Raptors to the mall's bowling alley. The baby was used to attract the attention of the remaining male adult Raptor, but when it arrived it ate the baby. Before the team could tranquilise the Raptor, Abby Maitland accidentally distracted it, and the Raptor attacked her and Connor before fleeing and escaping. The Raptor escaped into the mall parking lot, and Cutter and Stephen used motorbikes to lure it back into the mall, where Connor managed to tranquilise it when it cornered Stephen and Cutter. Both the tranquilised adult Raptors were taken by Cutter back through the Anomaly into their home. However, there the Raptors regained consciousness and the male chased Cutter and Stephen back towards the Anomaly. Cutter made it through but the Raptor caught Stephen's ankle. Fortunately, Stephen was pulled through the Anomaly just as it was closing. The Anomaly then closed on the Raptor's neck as it was trying to drag Stephen back through, decapitating and killing it. Episode 2.6/2.7 )]]Two male Raptors were captured by Oliver Leek's forces and kept in Leek's Creature Prison as part of his creature army. The Raptors and the other creatures escaped when the facility's security was shut down, and subsequently ran rampant in the bunker. The two Raptors were later lured back to the cage room by the feeding time siren, along with the other creatures. One Raptor, upon arriving back at the cage room, attacked Helen Cutter and grabbed her by the ankle as she tried to escape with Cutter and Stephen, prompting Stephen to shoot and kill it. The other Raptor was subsequently locked inside the cage room with Stephen and the other creatures, and set about surrounding and killing Stephen with the other creatures. The Raptor presumably died in the cage room when the trapped creatures turned on and killed each other. Episode 3.10 In a forest in the Cretaceous, Danny Quinn, Connor Temple and Abby Maitland came across three juvenile Raptors devouring the body of another Raptor. When the Raptors noticed the trio, they chased them through the forest and up a tree. Shortly after, while the Raptors below tried to climb up the tree to reach the team, Danny threw a sound grenade which knocked the three Raptors out. Later, another, adult Raptor followed Danny through an Anomaly into the Great Rift Valley in the Pliocene, and stalked him across the Pliocene Valley. . (Episode 3.10)]] Back in the Cretaceous, one of the juvenile Raptors woke up and menaced Abb,y before Connor distracted it and threw dirt in its face, aggravating it; he then knocked the Raptor back out with a stick. In the Pliocene, after Helen and Danny's argument at Site 333 ended, Helen prepared to depart, when the adult Raptor which had followed Danny into the Pliocene came up behind and attacked her. It tackled her and knocked them both off of the cliff they were on, causing them both to fall to their deaths. Episode 4.1 In the Cretaceous forest (a year after Connor and Abby arrived there), a male Raptor arrived at their den to scavenge for items with which to build a nest to attract a mate. It sniffed at Abby's dropped bag, and followed the scent to behind a tree they were hiding behind. However it turned back to the bag and stole Abby's foil blanket to add to its nest. Connor took the blanket back while the Raptor was gone, and also found Helen's Anomaly Opening Device, which the Raptor had incorporated into its nest as well. Later, Abby returned and used the blanket to lure the Raptor towards a Spinosaurus that was blocking her and Connor's way to an Anomaly, and the Raptor took on the larger dinosaur. )]]However, the Raptor was unable to last long in the fight, and was eventually killed and eaten by the Spinosaurus. Episode 5.3 A female Raptor came through an Anomaly to London in 1868, where it went on a killing spree and became known as "Spring-Heeled Jack". It later came through another Anomaly into an Art Museum in present day London. The ARC team arrived and were attacked by the Raptor, until Hilary Becker tricked the creature into jumping back through the Anomaly while it was attempting to kill him. In the Victorian, Matt Anderson found the Raptor in an old storage shack in a Victorian warehouse, but it fled the scene when Emily Merchant arrived. A short time later, the Raptor attacked Henry Merchant's stagecoach in the street, scaring the horse off and killing the driver. The Raptor then returned to its nest in the Victorian warehouse, followed by Matt and Emily. Matt distracted it with a whip until Emily knocked it out with Matt's EMD. )]] Matt and Emily then dragged the unconscious Raptor back to the Anomaly, and threw it down a stairway through the Anomaly and back into the art museum in the present. When Henry Merchant came through the Anomaly and set off the art museum's motion detectors, the noise woke the Raptor up. It attacked and killed Henry before Becker either killed it or knocked it back out with an EMD. It is unknown what happened to the Raptor afterwards, but if it survived Becker's EMD shots, then it was presumably placed in the ARC's Menagerie. Alternate timeline In the timeline which existed before Matt Anderson's intervention in 1868, by the time Emily Merchant was committed to Bedlam Asylum, the "Spring-Heeled Jack" Raptor that was terrorising London at that time had caused twelve deaths. (Episode 5.2) This was presumably negated from the timeline after Matt went back to 1868 and he and Emily captured the Raptor and brought it to the present. (Episode 5.3) Other references Episode 3.1 One of the Raptors from Episode 2.7 was visible in Cutter's flashback of Stephen's death. Episode 4.1 The Raptor which killed Helen Cutter in Episode 3.10 was seen in James Lester's recap of the events leading up to Series 4. Non-canon Raptors appear in the Watch YouTube Game, along with other creatures which attack Your screen as the Primeval creatures move over to Watch. Raptors are killed by only one shot. Deaths caused *Security Guard 1 *Security Guard 2 *Castle Cross Shopping Mall operative *One of its own kind *Stephen Hart *Helen Cutter (indirectly) *Twelve Victorian London citizens (alternate timeline) *Victorian coach driver *Dr. Webster *Henry Merchant *Twelve or less other Victorian London citizens CGI Models Raptor-model.png|The Raptor model for Episode 5.3. raptor-model2.png|The Raptor model for Series 2, 3 and 4. Trivia *It is unknown what species the Raptors seen in the original Primeval programme are. Different sources have given their species as Velociraptor and Utahraptor, and their size and appearance would suggest they are Deinonychus. The ITV website labels them as Dromaeosaurus. *The Raptor is the only dinosaur to appear in Series 2. *This is one of the few creatures to show sexual dimorphism; males have blue spots around the eyes, whereas females don't. *This creature has appeared in every series, except Series 1. *Although Raptors famously have "disembowelling claws" on their feet that would appear to easily be able to tear open a man, it is only shown using its jaws to attack. *The Raptors are shown to be very aggressive towards almost all other animals. This is proven in Episode 2.7 when a Raptor snaps its jaws at an Arthropleura and a Future Predator, and can be heard scrapping with a Smilodon. Also, in Episode 4.1, one Raptor attacks a much larger Spinosaurus. *Discounting Coelurosauravus and humans, Raptors are Primeval's second most recurring creature, after the Future Predator. *The brief fight sequence between the Spinosaurus and the Raptor in Episode 4.1 is an obvious homage to a mirrored scenario depicted in Jurassic Park, between the Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Velociraptor. If one listens carefully when the Raptor is caught in the Spinosaurus’ jaws and screams, the sound of the Velociraptor squeals from the Jurassic Park series can be heard. *The Raptors' colour changes very slightly over the course of the show, from black and white in Series 2 to bluish and off-white in Series 3 and 4. *The Spring-Heeled Jack Raptor in Series 5 had no protofeathers at all (it has been theorised by some fans that this was because the Raptor had contracted a disease in Victorian London that caused its protofeathers to fall out, because the empty knobs where the protofeathers were attached were visible). Alternatively, it could have just been moulting. *In contrast to their portrayal in popular culture, the Raptors presented in Primeval have been anti-heroic several times. For example, in Episode 3.10, the adult Raptor stopped Helen Cutter from negating humanity's evolution from the timeline by killing her and itself; in Episode 4.1, the Raptor, by attacking and distracting the Spinosaurus, unintentionally gave Connor and Abby enough time to escape through the Anomaly; and in Episode 5.3, the Raptor unintentionally saved Matt Anderson from being shot, and twice saved Emily from being wrongfully committed. *The digital model of the baby Raptor from Episode 2.1 was used for the "Velociraptor" identified by Nigel Marven in Episode 3.4. *''The Mill'' re-used the CGI models of Primeval's raptors for BBC's Doctor Who (series seven), and for for the last episode of series one of BSkyB's Sinbad. *The Raptor has made more appearances in Primeval than any other dinosaur. *Some of the behaviour of this species of Raptor is similar to that of the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park. ''Also, some of the sounds these Raptors make are the same ones heard in ''Jurassic Park. See also *Raptor (Primeval)/Gallery Category:Creatures Category:Series 2 Creatures Category:Series 3 Creatures Category:Series 4 Creatures Category:Series 5 Creatures Category:Recurring creatures Category:Promotional Creatures Category:Mesozoic creatures Category:Cretaceous creatures Category:Prehistoric creatures Category:Reptiles Category:Dinosaurs Category:Theropods Category:Vertebrates Category:Carnivores Category:Creatures in captivity Category:Creatures owned by the ARC Category:Oliver Leek's creatures